our next great adventure is upon us. the endless yard sale… aka the route 127 yard sale. that’s right, y’all. it’s over 600 glorious miles of junk. over 600 miles of yard sales. from michigan to alabama….winding through ohio, kentucky, tennessee, and georgia along the way. 600 miles of my happy place. 600 miles of dashboard therapy.

it’s the battle of the deal seekers…it’s survivor goes junkin’. it’s olympic style garage sale action. 3 teams will meet head to head at the endless yard sale. 3 teams have been selected to represent the few, the proud, the junkiest. who will win? who has out-trained the rest?

the gloves are off. it’s winner take all. and we’ll be there to host this game show style competition.

we’ll be there…with our griswald-style family in tow… and of course, joe pete will be in the house as our official smokey-and-the-bandit-style-junk-buying-deal-spotting driver. what?! what?! for anyone that doesn’t know who joe pete is, just head on down to warrenton this antiques week…he’s the baddest, junkiest, junker this side o’ kathmandu! he’s our brother in junk, our fellow road warrior, and one of our very best friends.

y’all stay tuned…i’ll be tweetin, instagramming, and blogging from the road.

call time would typically be between 6-8am. i realize this doesn’t seem too incredibly early but the challenge for amie & me was to be ‘camera-ready’ at this time….hair, make-up, clothes. anndddd considering we rarely take time for our hair or our make up, this was an effort. and no, to those that have asked, we DID NOT have a hair & make up person. (which was probably quite evident in most of the episodes :))

travel to the client’s house. meet the fam. chat, discuss their interests, passions…get to know them and what they like/don’t like. (although this portion is cut down to about 4 mins per episode, this would typically take 3-4 hours of shoot time).

leave said family’s house and head for our ‘roadside stop’ where we would sketch our plan out on paper. (1-2 hrs)

leave the roadside stop and go junkin’. (4-5 hrs)

insert between each bullet an OTF. (that’s camera talk for on-the-fly…short impromptu interviews that may or may not be used in final edit)

load the truck/trailer and drive home. (at this point, it was usually dark outside so we would get home, spend a few hours brainstorming our current makeover plan of attack, cuddle with our kids, and determine what supplies we needed for the next day’s DIY’s)

{amie & i stoppin for a photo op at LiZZIE LouS in round top...dreaming of mermaids & salty air....}

for each episode we had 3 DIY’s to complete…typically using some of the found objects from our previous day of junkin’

formal interviews were also conducted on this day…at some point between playing with power tools and filming OTF’s, we would change into something a little ‘dressier’, give our hair a quick shake out, touch up our make up, and then run out for a 1-2 hour sit-down interview pertaining to the current episode.

{gettin mic'd by corey baby}

{workin on DIY's for bane's episode...yep, our kids were on set every day}

on this day we would empty the space of the current furniture, unload our trailer, and begin pulling everything back into the space for our big makeover reveal.

in a perfect world, this would have been complete by around 3pm on each makeover day…howeverrrrrrrr….it typically took us much longer thus sometimes pushing our reveal to the family, our final interviews, and final pictures to well after dark.

after interviews and pics, we would load our trailer and head back home, hit the sack, and get ready for the next morning which would begin a new family with a new meet & greet.

{makeover/reveal day at the diehl's}

now for a few of your FAQ’s…

did y’all have hair and make up? no, we didn’t have hair and make-up people. we were totally hollywood divas with a compact mirror the size of a credit card & a tube of lipgloss in our audio guy’s gear bag. we were so focused on doing a great job with each space, having to spend time on our hair and make-up seemed minor.

did you have a real plan before reveal day for each space? it most certainly would have simplified things to have a ‘real’ plan…but unfortunately, that’s just not how me and amie roll…we have to get in a space…soak in it, hold things up here and there, and then just jump in and start decorating. for each space, we had a general theme (as you see in the sketches)…but nothing was ever set in stone.

was there anything about filming that suprised you? YES!!! we were totallly suprised by how emotional we were at EVERY reveal. we were so emotionally connected to each family and each space that we couldn’t help but bawl like babies at every reveal (as did all of the homeowners). AND we had no idea how completely connected we would become with our crew. AND we had no idea how grueling filming is…we didn’t eat, sleep, or drink for 3 months. we were AWOL from everything else in our lives completely focused on the filming process & our kids. thank gawsh, our kids were involved with us EVERY day… helping on set, eating with us and the crew, shooting hoops with the crew, and hangin with us between takes…

will there be a season 2? hgtv loves jg and we love them! they’ve received great response from y’all (thank you!)! no official word yet… stay tuned…we promise, you’ll be the first to know!

as the season comes to an end, we want to say thank y’all sooooo very much for lovin what we do! thank you for watching our show! thank you for all of your endless tweets, facebook posts, emails, and phone messages!!! thank you from the bottom of our junky hearts!

and amazing thanks to HGTV for letting us do what we do…for letting us be who we are…and for being a totally kick ass network!

{hgtv + JG + meg caswell = happy family}

THANK you to our JG girls! for being our right-hand girls. for having our backs. for picking up our slack. and for being more than employees…for being our friends.

and to trey…our tattooed ace carpenter with a teddy bear heart…our quiet man of zen.

{workin' around the clock on dierks bentley's airstream}

{creative brainstorming in action in DB's airstream}

anddddddd to our dear crew…y’all came into our lives, our homes, our world. you invaded our privacy, pushed us to our limits, and made us feel like we really werefilming mission impossible as you would hang out of vehicles, camera strapped to your shoulder while driving 70 mph down the hwy…all the while expecting us to drive as if it’s not a very realistic possibility that you could fall out of your stunt vehicle and me run over you right there. in the middle of the highway.

{clay gearing up our truck for road shots...}

{annnd alex gearing up large marge}

{jason preparing for some stunt filming...}

do not try this at home…

{we've pulled over here...but this is how we would drive down the hwy...70mph...with his back hatch open...him hanging out of the van...ME driving right behind him...y'all, it was SCARY}

and quite often what our back seat looked like…

{my, what large cameras you have...}

and you became part of our family. part of this community. part of junk gypsy.

{we bought this at an auction years ago. it's 60'X40' and flew over the state fair of texas in 1972}

amie and dad in the early days…

this picture reminds me of one of dad’s favorite old cowboy songs (and our bedtime song he would sing to us when we were kids)…”well i was hangin ’round town, just spending my time. out of a job, not earnin’ a dime…” ~strawberry roan, marty robbins